Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday October 07, 2012 @11:01AM
from the if-you-buy-their-claim-that-it's-ended dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Modern Europeans may have interbred with Neanderthals as recently as 37,000 years ago, after modern humans with advanced stone tools expanded out of Africa, according to a new study. In an attempt to understand why the Neanderthals are more closely related to people from outside of Africa, researchers from Harvard and the Max Planck Institute estimated that while the last sex between Neanderthals and modern humans may have occurred 37,000 to 86,000 years ago, it is most likely that it occurred 47,000 to 65,000 years ago."

"Have you noticed, that humans and Neanderthals are still having sex?
All the denouncement had absolutely no effect.
Parents and counselors constantly scorn them,
But humans and Neanderthals are still having sex and nothing seems to stop them."

Funny, but Maria is probably as Neanderthal as Arnold. What interests me is that the Neanderthal genes never made it back into Sub-Saharan Africa, which means that some Africans remained mostly separated from non-Africans for a quite a long time. Same goes for Micronesians and Austrailians, who have Denisovan genes that the rest of humanity doesn't have.

And I guess this explains how it is we managed to end up with noticeably tweaked physical features. If Europeans and Mid-East people had been exchanging a lot of genes with Sub-Saharan Africans (for example if there had been a lot of trade between Africa and Europe or if there had been migrations into Africa) you'd expect there to be less difference in skin and eye color and more variation of hair curliness among Africans.

Had there been more trade or immigration to Africa, Africans might look more like African-Americans, who have a mixture of African, European and other ancestry.

I am pretty sure that DNA wouldn't effect the looks as much regarding skin tone and possibly hair. It was most likely thousands of years spent in a specific environment that contributed to looks. It is possible to see drastic changes to a persons body in one lifetime so you can just imagine what would happen if generations settled in a specific area.

And how do you think population characteristics are passed between generations? magic?

I am pretty sure that DNA wouldn't effect the looks as much regarding skin tone and possibly hair. It was most likely thousands of years spent in a specific environment that contributed to looks. It is possible to see drastic changes to a persons body in one lifetime so you can just imagine what would happen if generations settled in a specific area.

And how do you think population characteristics are passed between generations? magic?

Dude, there's no point in arguing with Lamarck [wikipedia.org] anymore. He's just bitter that his theory was discredited after the works of Darwin, Mendel, and Watson/Crick, so he spends his time online attempting to plant seeds of doubt.

It's just some form of bizarre astroturfing/trolling he's been doing for the last ~250 years now.

Dude, there's no point in arguing with Lamarck [wikipedia.org] anymore. He's just bitter that his theory was discredited after the works of Darwin, Mendel, and Watson/Crick, so he spends his time online attempting to plant seeds of doubt.

Actually, Lamarckian evolution acurately describes the evolution of cultures, not individuals. None of us has to evolve culturally from the Serangeti as we grow up, after all. A cute sci fi book,:talks about it [amazon.com] a bit. Good read. It definitely made me think.

Had there been more trade or immigration to Africa, Africans might look more like African-Americans, who have a mixture of African, European and other ancestry.

I am pretty sure that DNA wouldn't effect the looks as much regarding skin tone and possibly hair. It was most likely thousands of years spent in a specific environment that contributed to looks. It is possible to see drastic changes to a persons body in one lifetime so you can just imagine what would happen if generations settled in a specific area.

OK, correct me if I'm wrong, but are you saying that skin color, etc, is a choice???

A New Zealander buys several sheep, hoping to breed them for wool. After several weeks, he notices that none of the sheep are getting pregnant, and calls a vet for help. The vet tells him that he should try artificial insemination.

The New Zealander doesn't have the slightest idea what this means but, not wanting to display his ignorance, only asks the vet how he will know when the sheep are pregnant. The vet tells him that they will stop standing around and will, instead, lay down and wallow in the grass when they are pregnant.

The Man hangs up and gives it some thought. He comes to the conclusion that artificial insemination means he has to impregnate the sheep. So, he loads the sheep into his truck, drives them out into the woods, has sex with them all, brings them back and goes to bed.

Next morning, he wakes and looks out at the sheep. Seeing that they are all still standing around, he concludes that the first try didn't take, and loads them in the truck again. He drives them out to the woods, bangs each sheep twice for good measure, brings them back and goes to bed.

Next morning, he wakes to find the sheep still just standing around. One more try, he tells himself, and proceeds to load them up and drive them out to the woods. He spends all day shagging the sheep and, upon returning home, falls listlessly into bed.

The next morning, he cannot even raise himself from the bed to look at the sheep. He asks his wife to look out and tell him if the sheep are laying in the grass. "No," she says, "they're all in the truck and one of them's honking the horn."

I do wonder what changed after the alleged period when occasional reproduction occurred.

Not just successful reproduction, but offspring whose genetics was carried forward into current populations to be detected by such research.

One possibility is the two branches diverged enough that crosses muled out. Another is that some crosses might still have remained fertile but the populations resulting from crosses after the cutoff date might have later died out without crossing back into those lines that did survive. (Perhaps cultural values or differing ideas of beauty led to a separation of these two branches of Humanity.)

The article is great for situations like this when you read the poorly crafted summary and then have questions.

found that early humans had occasionally successfully interbred with Neanderthals

... meaning it probably did not work most of the time. What changed is most likely the rare chance in which it succeeded. It's not like they went from compatible to not compatible overnight. At some point the interbreeding stopped working.

I think what you are wondering is what caused the change. Were the populatio

There may have been a lot of sex without conception, and even a number of later Neanderthal-European hookups which did conceive. If the entire Neanderthal branch of evolution died out, it's equally possible that other, later branches, of Neanderthal-Euro stepkids died out, or used contraception. But I guess this gets the word "sex" in the headline, which is probably key. The study shows the last sex which produced surviving progeny which has been blood sampled, not necessarily evidence of the last snoo-snoo.

What makes me laugh is the changes that have occurred in artists illustrations of Neanderthals:
Before dna connection made: Ugly, primitive - almost thuggish.
After dna connection: Intelligent looking, caring for others - could almost be your old uncle... (not mine though;-)

Neanderthal means Neander Valley in German. I used to live near Dusseldorf which is also close to this valley in Germany. There is a really nice train ride to get to it, there's a nice nature trail and a museum with some displays of Neanderthal bones and artifacts. Neanderthals could probably interbreed with modern humans even if they were a new species. There are inter-special hybrids, such as mules. But they are usually sterile if the genome is too divergent. Neanderthal DNA is believed to be in our modern genome too. So they could not have been to genetically different than we are. Species are somewhat arbitrarily assigned anyway. It is also commonly believed by many that they were lesser mentally developed and brute beasts. The average cranial capacity of Neanderthal skulls exceeds that of modern humans. There's a lot of controversy surrounding their intellectual ability. Especially their language skills. The hyoid bone in your throat allows you to produce the sounds of modern language. They have found Neanderthal hyoid bones which were well developed. This has deepened that controversy. Just like there is great physical diversity among domestic dogs, why couldn't the same apply to homo sapiens? There is speculation that they were not immune to some of the infectious diseases that we had spread to their population. That this might have been the cause of their extinction and not our superiority. This would also explain why contact with them invariably led to extinction.

Its still unclear how different Neanderthals may have appeared, but probably not that different. They could probably talk, but maybe not as well as cromagnon. They may have appeared more "robust", ie. muscular. Probably both of are races were your typical ape "horndogs" willing to have sex with anything that looked decent at certain times. Most of the apes and modern humans are like this.

Yes, but isn't it generally considered that if they DO mate and produce fertile offspring "in the wild", they're the same species? Unless there's limited-interfertility issue, which can't be established now.

Everybody except the Africans seems to have gotten some of the Neanderthal genes, so that says that the mixing of genes happened early or often or both. Maybe the low mix of Neanderthal genes is just due to the late-out-of-Africa people being more numerous or their genes being more advantageous. But the Neanderthal genes that are left are probably adaptive in some way. Possibly in dealing with cold weather, limited sunlight or non-tropical immune challenges. I read that there are a good number of possibl

And they might have gotten that DNA in a few isolated cases. Keep in mind that there weren't many humans for much of our past, especially after the alleged Toba supervolcano eruption in Indonesia about 70k years ago (which incidentally is the older part of the range for DNA influence from Neanderthals). And as far as the researchers were able to tell, there's about 20k years at the end where no genetic exchange occurred.

If two individuals give fertile descendency, aren't they of the same species?

Well, yes and/or no (i.e. it's complicated). After all, canid hybrids [wikipedia.org] are often fertile (at least, with their parent species or a like hybrid), but wolves, coyotes, dingoes, and jackals are generally considered to be different species. Similarly, felid hybrids such as ligers [wikipedia.org] are fertile with other ligers and with both lion and tiger mates.

I don't think that taxonomy has been in use for a long time. I haven't heard any researcher refer to Neandertals as a subspecies of H. sapens for many years. Nor would it make much sense considering they are likely both daughter species of H. erectus.

I don't think that taxonomy has been in use for a long time. I haven't heard any researcher refer to Neandertals as a subspecies of H. sapens for many years. Nor would it make much sense considering they are likely both daughter species of H. erectus.

Right. Genetic evidence shows an ancient lineage split with Neanderthals around 700-800,000 years ago, and modern humans coming into existence only around 250,000 years ago.

Either way, they were either Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis or Homo Neanderthalensis, but most certainly not Homo Sapiens Sapiens, which is our species. They differed not only in culture and technology, they were a separate species.

And yes, different, but closely related species, can still interbreed and have viable offspring. That definition of species is not used anywhere above high school biology, because things get a lot more complicated once you take into account ring species [wikipedia.org].

Exactly. The species problem really isn't that hard, in a nutshell it's what the expert(s) in that field say it is. Sometimes the difference in species is a tiny dot of color, other times to very dissimilar forms are the same species, but these are edge cases, in general if there's a way to tell two things apart, they're different species; what's often left out is the temporal notion of this - species change and grade into each other all the time. H. sapiens and Neanderthal met all the requirements for bein

Except that Neanderthals were also homo Sapiens. But they were more primitive in their technology, for whatever reason.

I thought it had been established that Neanderthals had slightly better tools, technology if you want, than contemporary Humans. They were just loners and didn't build societies, and only lived in small family groups, and eventually disapperared as a destinct species.

At some point maybe, but 'modern' humans had a tendency to rapidly innovate/improve their technology while Neanderthals apparently did not. Early 'modern' humans also didn't build societies, instead only living in small family groups.

No, the Neanderthals liked technology, but invented patents so that Ug got exclusive rights to fire and refused to license it to Og. There was also some nastiness over whether the stone tools could have rounded edges.

Humans freely ripped off Neanderthal technology. The Neanderthals tried to take them to court, but the humans had not yet evolved enough to understand the concept of intellectual property rights so just ignored them.

Eventually the Neanderthals consumed all of their resources in a massive lawsuit that left the earth scorched and the humans scratching their heads and telling themselves that whatever happened in the future, they wouldn't ever be so stupid as to repeat those mistakes.

> But they were more primitive in their technology, for whatever reason.

I disagree. If anything, the Neanderthals liked technology TOO MUCH for their own good. Humans were content to attack with spears in large organized groups. Neanderthals fought back as individuals armed to the teeth with surprisingly sophisticated weapons. Humans tended the fields and used primitive axes to cut firewood. Neanderthals spent half the summer trying to make a better plow and improve the ergonomics of their axe.

Whites did poorly for a very long time, actually. It wasn't until the last millenium that they started diverging from the rest of the world. Before that, Northern and Western Europe was a backwater and had been since before the dawn of civilization.

... Before that, Northern and Western Europe was a backwater and had been since before the dawn of civilization.

Ever heard of Alexander of Macedon? You know...the guy who conquered half the world in the 4th century BC? Yeah, that was over two millennia ago. Maybe you should go take an Intro to Western Civ class, clown.

And when did Alexander of Macedon ever set foot in Northern or Western Europe? He himself thought he had conquered half the world, but we have learned a little more geography in the last 2400 years. Most of Greece, most of Turkey, part of the eastern half of the Middle East and Pakistan is not half the world.

To expand on MightyMartian has to say even the most advanced parts of Europe had no technological advantage over East Asia until about 1700, had no economic advantage over China until about 1800. The per capita GDPs of England and China were the same until the Industrial Revolution. Europe only demonstrated any sort of cultural dominance over China in 1839 thanks to the new weaponry and supply capability of the Industrial Revolution. Those "advanced" Aryans sure were lazy for a long, long time.

but...you're not correct since the nazi's never made the claim that their superiority was derived from purity. they argued that since they were superior they should keep themselves pure. which means your statement is made up bullshit and you are a liar.

Nice strawman but what do the Nazi's have to do with the basic facts of the situation? Europeans have Neanderthal DNA (Neander Valley is in Germany btw) and have fared far better than the pure "humans" in the African subcontinent. Deal with it.

Which has always been a marvel to me. Even in the 1930's there was enough known about genetics and an established theory of speciation and natural selection that should have enable people to recognize that if anything purity is no virtue at all.

Its not good for our dogs and its not good for us. Mutations are one way to gain improved forms but the direct mixing of existing genetic material followed by the selection process is a much faster way. Blood lines that were mixed before the neolithic era, probabl

A really interesting Slashdot phenomenon is while attempting to be all scientificy and stuff and being strong advocates of Darwinian natural selection, don't seem to really grasp the implications of the concept. No species tries to maintain equilibrium. Equilibrium is forced upon them.

Only when it's forced on it. If a species had infinite resources and infinite space, then it could expand indefinitely, and that would be the smart thing to do. In those circumstances an equilibrium would be pointless.

Now the question is: Do we have limited or (virtually) unlimited resources? If our technology advances enough that we are able to reach other star systems, then our resources will be nearly infinite. Even just mining our entire solar system would set us up nicely for centuries to come. So why

Could you provide evidence to the neanderthals contraceptive practices and motivation?

Practices:1. There was the "IUR" (intra-uterine rock)2. Not waxing their chest (women only)3. Condoms (made of boar's hide)4. "Not tonight, I have a headache" (...from you hitting me with that club)5....and ladies going out on the town with their cock-blocking friend, the Velociraptor.

Motivation:"I don't want to bring a child into a world that's so overcrowded with people.Like, we just saw someone by the watering hole two months ago."

That's a nice story. Unfortunately it's got too many scientific errors to be science fiction but sounds too sciencey to be general fiction. I don't think you'll find a publisher willing to take it. Maybe you could write it as being mostly sex scenes and bill it as a romance?